Screwtape and the Priest
by Silvertongue90
Summary: Screwtape is writing to Wormwood suggestions on how to snare Claude Frollo's soul.
1. Chapter 1

My dear Wormwood,

I was severely displeased to hear in your last letter that your patient has joined the priesthood. You were charged with the task of discouraging him from that profession after we learned of his inclination.

His hunger for knowledge is insatiable. He could have been a brilliant philosopher like Socrates, whom as I am sure you recall, lead a truly tragic life. Ah, the Greeks were a special race, my nephew. I often find myself reminiscing that deliciously wicked era.

Fear not, for your patient is yet to be lost. We have a duty to pursue all souls until the Enemy intervenes and takes them from our grasp.

In your last letter you mentioned that he is still pursuing the art of alchemy in his spare time. This is a matter that will have to be treated with much delicacy. Men of our Enemy abhor anything they believe comes from our Father Below and will shun it.

It is heartening news to learn that your patient has not yet embraced those archaic ideals and continues his research of turning lead into gold.

You must use this weakness with the utmost discretion. Keeping him busy with his potions and books will turn his thoughts from the Enemy and after he has performed his duties he will be eager to continue his work and give little thought to the souls he wishes to save.

We wish for him to join the numerous priests who forget why they joined the cursed Church in the first place. We want him to become pious to the point he no longer associates himself with the heathens and drives away would—be Christians from the Enemy and the Church with his attitude.

Not only will he help us gain more souls to welcome into our Fiery Halls, but he will also lose his own soul in the process. As our Enemy so pointed out in his Cursed Book, not everyone who says, 'Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.'

It is essential that you whisper in your patient's ear that everyone is heathens and he a true man of God. He must be so wrapped up in his righteousness that he does not see his own faults. When he starts to dwell on his faults whisper a suggestion that will take his mind off the daunting subject.

Another thing you should keep in mind are his prayers. I know I have told you in the past to taint his prayers until he eventually stops altogether; however, now that he is a priest that will not do for him.

When he prays make sure he does not pray for the peoples souls. Have him dwell on theirs sins, but keep him from asking for their forgiveness. If he starts to pray fervently for someone, remind him of something they have done either directly to him or to someone he knows that way he will dwell more on that moment than his actual prayer. Eventually, his prayers will become mundane and routine. Soon he will be rushing through his prayers to get back to his studies.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	2. Chapter 2

My dear Wormwood,

Your last letter pleased me greatly.

I am glad to hear that your patient has continued pursuing his reading with great zealous and has already started to become bored with some of his duties. However, I was concerned about the prayers he has been sending to the Enemy of late about his brother, Jehan.

That will not do for our cause at all. He can not pray for his brother to become a Christian.

I have taken the liberty of speaking to Corruption about his patient and have found that he is a man who likes living in the moment and has a deliciously wicked habit of hanging around the brothels and gambling away his ill gained money.

Use that against your patient.

While in prayer, bring up the memories of Jehan stumbling into the cathedral, drunk, to demand money for his sins. That will make your patient too angry and embarrassed to continue praying for him. Instead he will think of all the grievances brought on by his brother.

It would also serve in our best interest if you brought up those memories several times throughout the day. Keep Jehan always in the back of his mind and you will see that your patient will come to hate his brother.

He will never show it of course, except maybe every now and then, when his brother is especially tiresome. Or he has had a trying day.

He must be so caught up in the embarrassment and resentment of having such a wayward brother that the thought to pray for him will never cross his mind, or if it does it will be more of a complaint than a prayer.

If you can accomplish that he will already have committed a great sin.

The Cursed Book tells us that any man who hates his brother or neighbor has murdered him in his heart. We want your patient to murder Jehan a dozen time over in his mind and heart.

Have him plead with the Enemy to know why he would inflict such a brother on him and beg to know what he did to deserve such punishment. Do not; however, let him think for a moment he should pray for any sins he may have committed.

I must admit that I am surprised, Wormwood. I did not think you would do so well on your assignment, but you have proven otherwise. Everything is going wonderfully to plan. Do not celebrate just yet though. Your patient is young and the young often times prove to be equally easy to manipulate, but just as hard to keep.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	3. Chapter 3

My dear Wormwood,

Sniveling and placing the blame on others does not become you.

The priest is your patient and what he does despite your suggestions is entirely your fault and you should not try attacking a fellow fiend. You should be grateful that I managed to keep Corruption from having you endlessly tortured for an eternity.

I told him, and now I am telling you, that you both must work together in order to make sure your individual patients do not reach that Holy of Holies as the Enemy likes to call it. If you had not let your temper get the best of you, you would have seen the brilliance of a new plan.

Your patient may have been moved by compassion to adopt the disfigured monster in the foundling box, but we can use that to our advantage.

As I suggested to you in a previous letter to keep his mind occupied with all the negativities of his brother, so now will you do the same for this Quasimodo. He does not yet realize what he has gotten himself into. He has decidedly bit off more than he can chew.

Your patient's days will now be filled with keeping his duties as priest, resenting his brother, and taking care of a baby.

That should more than adequately make your patient go mad with a desire to lash out at anyone. No doubt his brother will be the brunt of his fury as he will not take it out directly on a young child that is too innocent to know right from wrong.

However, when the child grows up, your patient will begin to realize that he perhaps should not have adopted such a monster. Make sure he is too embarrassed for anyone to see the child and forbid him from ever leaving the cathedral.

I would suggest that the priest put him somewhere where even his fellow clergymen will not see the horrid sight of his adopted son very often.

Very soon, the priest will think that he is suffering greatly for his God. Let him think highly of himself because he has managed to withstand his brother and suffer in silence. As well as taking in a child that others wanted to drown. It is imperative that he thinks he is doing the Enemy's will by keeping the child hidden away. Not for one minute should he ever consider his actions to be of a selfish nature.

Also, I wish you to compare notes with Corruption about your patients and decide on the best course to take for the brothers next step in their relationship. We want them to despise each other, but we also want Jehan to keep coming around to aggravate the priest.

I do not wish to hear of any more antics on your part as I would be very displeased.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	4. Chapter 4

My dear Wormwood,

When I did not receive a letter from you for some time, I freely admit, I thought Corruption finally found a way to kill you permanently. I was about to prepare a burial shroud for you when your letter arrived.

You have certainly been busy the passed few weeks and I'd say if it weren't for that gypsy girl you would have lost your patient. Thankfully, she showed up at the right time and wrestled feelings from the priest.

I can not imagine why this plan did not come to me sooner.

The one sin all men fall for is lust.

A beautiful woman turns up and they stand there staring like pathetic dogs. This is especially perfect because he is not allowed to touch her.

In your letter you mentioned her name. It is a decidedly odd name and a mouthful too. We must use her name to our advantage. Whisper it in your patient's ear throughout the day, make him become obsessed with the name. Remind him of the girl in his sleep or when he is reading.

When he goes outside let him subconsciously look for her in the crowd or lure him to the sound of music in hopes that it is her.

You might also try making him afraid of her and the feelings she provokes from him.

As he does not have much experience in these matters, that should not be too hard. Better yet, it would be a glorious idea to make him afraid of all women. I doubt he will respond to most women as he has the gypsy, but we want his fevered mind to think he will. He'll start to take steps to ensure that no women is allowed into the cathedral, not even their leader's own daughter and he will take to hiding his face if he suspects a woman is nearby.

Be sure to also keep his current afflictions present too. Namely, his brother and young charge. Every man has a breaking point and your patient's just might be from running in three different directions.

You mentioned he has been praying to the Enemy to help him forget about her. That will not do at all. He must not come to terms with his new found emotions. That could be your undoing for all the work you have put into him.

Entice him to continue thinking of her in his every spare moment.

Eventually, he will want to put the blame on someone else as he did with his brother, but instead of blaming the Enemy; have him blame the girl. These creatures that the Enemy delights in so much, are very superstitious. The one thing all priests fear and hate are witches. Convince your patient that the girl is a sorceress who has snared his heart in an attempt to lead him to Hell.

He will more readily believe that than anything the Enemy can come up with. This will in turn want him to eradicate her in an attempt to fight off her supposed spell on him. However, you also want him to desire her greatly. Put it into his mind that maybe if he is allowed to touch her the feelings and turmoil will go away.

I will have a talk with the one that controls the gypsy because we don't want her falling in love with him. Instead we want her to despise him and call him names. It might even be a good idea to find some poor sap for her to fall in love with as this will make your patient insanely jealous and perhaps willing to do just about anything to secure her love.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	5. Chapter 5

My dear Wormwood,

I too am pleased with the results of our plan, but I caution you to not get too ecstatic.

We are by no means nearly finished with your patient. It has happened time and again, just when we think we have won; the Enemy cheats us from victory. You may celebrate after his soul is decidedly ours.

In your last letter you said the priest killed the man the gypsy fell in love with. That is good. He has now truly committed murder. The trial was a success as was the night in the dungeon when he tried to get her to choose between him or death.

The final stage for our plan is almost complete.

The girl must die so that your patient may fall into a deep depression. Be sure to remind him of all his faults and failures. We want him to take a good look at his life and see that he has accomplished nothing for his God. Remind him of all the times he could have been kinder, wiser, and more patient with his brother and how selfish he was in keeping the deformed monster hidden.

Remind him over and over again of the girl and all that he did to her. Remind him that he killed a man in a fit of passion and rage. Remind him that he touched the girl when he should never have even looked at her. Remind him that he tried to force himself on her.

When the time is ready, whisper to him that perhaps it is time to say goodbye to this world. We want him to commit the ultimate sin, one that he could never ask forgiveness for.

He must take his own life to ensure that we will have his soul to torment for all eternity.

That, my dear Wormwood, is when you can truly celebrate and drink to the success of another lost one for the Enemy. If all goes well I might even recommend to Our Father Below that you be allowed to torment the priest for a time. You may tell him all of your plan to trap him forever from the Enemy.

But if you fail, your punishment will be most severe, I assure you. Keep your focus on your goal as we enter the final stage. Victory is nigh.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape


	6. Chapter 6

My very dear, dear Wormwood,

This shall be my last letter to you for awhile as you will be too busy in your punishment to read anymore of my letters.

Rest assure that Diplop has some especially tasty torments for you. 'Tis I who was the one to recommend your punishment to Our Father Below and he decidedly approved my suggestions. You will be tormented by Diplop for five hundred years before going back to College. Hopefully, your experiences will teach you to be a better tempter.

Why, if it hadn't been for me to come and aide you at the last minute, your patient would have been lost to us forever.

I have invested too much time and letter writing to let that happen.

It was quite easy to whisper in the hunchback's ear that he should throw his master over the side of the cathedra,l as he has come to hate his father figure for everything he did to the gypsy.

You probably did not even notice that the monster was in love with the girl. If you had you could have used it to our advantage and had the priest kill the boy before he could make a mess of our plans.

If you had been paying more attention you would have known what he was up to.

Him, saving the gypsy, nearly destroyed all our hard work. I had to work quickly and get into the fevered mind of the priest and make him laugh over his victory of the witch after she was finally killed.

I believe that is what made the boy such an easy target to murder the priest. He could not stand by while his loved one died.

I was not sure if the priest had had time to repent of his sins and did not want to take the chance of him ever doing so. It is with great pleasure that I tell you he is currently being tormented by the unquenchable fires and thirst of Hell.

Corruption is still working on his patient and tells me he is near death's door from all the alcohol he has consumed and a particularly nasty disease he contracted one night at the brothel.

So, I expect him to be joining his brother soon. Won't that be a pleasant reunion?

I really wouldn't want to be in the priest's shoes when his brother finds out he was not as righteous as he would have everyone think. Oh, the delicious irony.

It is too bad you will not get to see it of course, but then I expect you will be in too much pain to think about them much.

When you get out of College I will expect you to write to me about your new patient.

I hope you do better with your next one, then you did this time for you sake. I don't know if I will be able to grant you any more favors and believe me, five hundred years of torment is better than the alternative.

I remain affectionately your uncle,

Screwtape


End file.
